The Ever-Faster Spinning Carousel of Biennials
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René Block We Hop On, We Hop Off: The Ever-faster Spinning Carousel of Biennials n the early sixties, when I was gathering my artistic experience, there Lars Ramberg, Liberté, 2005, mixed-media interactive were two biennials: the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo— sculpture consisting of three toilets at Nordic Pavilion, 2007 and every five years there was documenta, in Kassel. In 1973, the Venice Biennale. Courtesy of I René Block. Biennale of Sydney joined them, virtually unnoticed at first. Since then, not even forty years have passed, and today we are confronted with so many so-called biennials, triennials, and quadriennials that it’s almost impossible to get an overall perspective on them. Some statistics speak of there now being around one-hundred-and-fifty different projects. A few years ago, the Berlin cultural critic Marius Babias described this phenomenon as follows: In the nineties, the rapidly increasing value of culture as a location factor in global cities that were competing for investment put heavy pressure on the urban independent scenes and artistic milieus, which led them, in an attempt to break out of their political and artistic isolation, to develop new living proposals and career strategies that in turn were gratefully appropriated by the cultural institutions that were being forced to profile and legitimatize themselves. The culturally charged processes of political legitimization are 1 evident in this merry-go-round. 26 Vol. 12 No. 3 And then Babias gave a concrete example: . the Berlin Biennale was a component of a Berlin marketing strategy. After the fall of the Wall, the art scene—closely enmeshed with the construction boom in Berlin—tracked down the spirit of the times in raw excavations, romantically ruined courtyards and clubs. That Berlin generation was swiftly constructed: creative, hungry for experience, freshly showered. And no other cultural location could be better marketed in cultural- political terms. Showplaces, long nights of museums, gallery tours, Berlin Biennale: without further ado, the capital city planners, electrified by the Love Parade’s politically toned- down message “One World One Future,” bundled diverse cultural activities and lifestyles into a cultural event for the new central district—the Berlin Biennale. In the process, the boundaries between high culture and subculture, between left and right, have become, like the obligatory sparkling white wine: fluid.2 Maaria Wirkkala, Vietato Lo I’ve been quoting from the lecture “On the Sharco—Landing Prohibited, 2007, installation at Nordic History and Presence of Cultural Ideology,” which Pavilion, 2007 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of René Block. Babias delivered on August 6, 2000, in Kassel, at the first major congress of biennials. More than forty curators, artists, and organizers from some twenty biennials accepted an invitation from Kunsthalle Fridericianum and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in Stuttgart to get acquainted, exchange experiences, and discuss relevant themes such as: s The biennial as a location factor s The influence of biennials on the local art scene s The role of the artist within the global context: Has the world become the new studio? s The exhibition as a major event: On the ethics of curating s What still deserves support? The ever-increasing conflict between cultural funding organizations s Gwangju or Werkleitz, Venice or Istanbul: Where lies the future of biennials? The three-day congress at the Fridericianum—one day was set aside for internal discussions and two days were devoted to public events—took place as part of the exhibition Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which had invited twenty-nine artists from eight places that at the time hosted biennials. In an exemplary way, the exhibition demonstrated how the international shows mounted in those eight locations every two years have influenced local art production. It soon became clear at the conference that biennials of contemporary art develop for the most varied of reasons, but usually centre on the wish for Vol. 12 No. 3 27 global communication. In the early 1970s, Sydney found itself cut off from Western centres and the discourse on contemporary art; in addition, there were few occasions for the exhibition of contemporary art. According to Paula Latos-Valier, the general manager of the Biennale, which has existed since 1973, the Biennale of Sydney showed itself from the start to be an important catalyst for cultural development. And after just a few years, the Biennale proved to be a great stimulus not only for the local artists but also for collectors. While São Paulo had already, in the 1950s, sought out political and economic contact with Western industrial nations through its Bienal, cities like Lima, Shanghai, and Taipei have also tried more recently to break through political isolation. Sirous Namazi, Container, 2007, and Jacob Dahlgren, I, the world, things, life, 2004, installations at the Nordic Pavilion, 2007 Venice Biennale. Courtesy of René Block. Likewise, yet differently, Havana initially wanted to create a network among third world nations through art and, also, according to Bienal director Nelson Herrera Isla, to provide a forum for the “mainstream centres” of the West. However in Korea’s Gwangju, its Biennale serves to demonstrate remembrance of the student revolts against the former military regime that were bloodily beaten down in 1980 and has underlined today’s process of democratization. Yet each and every biennial can have a positive effect on global understanding—if, according to the observations of Yongwoo Lee, curator and founder of the Gwangju Biennale, there wasn’t also the threat of having the same star curators with their same artistic positions perpetually pursuing identical concepts around the globe. In view of the ever-growing presence of curator exhibitions, are we not facing the danger of global standardization? In any case, the situation has also given rise to a number of nomadic biennial artists who operate without their own studios and, instead, develop their works on-site, all around the world. This trend doesn’t have to be considered negative, as Jean-Hubert Martin, then curator of the Biennale de Lyon 2000, pointed out, because until a few years ago, artists were dependent on the whims of the art market. It was the flood of biennials that set them free. The problem of how to finance biennials has been omnipresent, which entails a discussion about the influence of state and private patrons on 28 Vol. 12 No. 3 curatorial matters. The Shanghai Biennale, for instance, represented by its deputy director Zhang Qing, has had to struggle with many taboos: no politics, no pornography, and no violence is allowed in the art presented. Johannesburg’s planned third Biennale in 2000 was in a precarious position and was being pulled on either side by two local politicians, with the regrettable outcome that this Biennale did not take place in Johannesburg then—and has not since. And in São Paolo, as co-curator Adriano Pedrosa explained in a public statement, this very established Bienal lost the entire curatorial team working with Ivo Mesquita toward the 2000 edition because of prolonged cultural-political conflicts and the untenable curatorial conditions imposed by the executive board. The team unanimously resigned. These were some of the points under discussion at the 2000 Kassel conference. The participants afterward declared themselves in solidarity with Pedrosa and Mesquita and sent a letter of protest to São Paulo. The participants also recognized the significance of this meeting and decided to establish an international association of biennials, modeled along the lines of associations like the AICA, CIAM, or IKT3. It became evident that many of the biennial organizers didn’t know each other and were meeting for the first time in Kassel. Also, they didn’t know anything about the problems of other biennials and they were able to make their own experiences known during the conference. Nothing has changed in regard to many of these problems as was expressed in many case studies here in Gwangju; on the contrary, in addition to organizational problems, there may be new ones that involve the ethics of global curating. Conceptual drawing for the 1990 Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of René Block. My talk at the Kassel conference, which was titled “Biennales—Local Art and Global Context—An Exhibition Model for the Future, Too?” dealt with the question of what makes a biennial a biennial, particularly in relation to the mother of all biennials— Venice. My opinion about Venice had changed since my emotionally critical stance in the seventies. Venice, with its national pavilions, occupies an exceptional position, especially among the large number of biennials that are structured and organized in the same way. My critique, though, is that nations focus too rigidly on national sovereignty. The 1993 Vol. 12 No. 3 29 German pavilion was a refreshing Alfredo Jaar, Spheres of Influence, 1990, installation exception, when the Korean artist view at the 1990 Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy of René Nam June Paik was shown there Block. together with the German artist Hans Haacke. But couldn’t one go further and also invite curators from other countries to decide on the entries? Or even exchange pavilions? Why shouldn’t French artists show in the German pavilion and German artists, or others, in France’s? Simply change buildings occasionally and break through the rigid system. Seven years after the Kassel conference, at the 2007 Venice Biennale, the countries of Finland, Norway, and Sweden made an attempt in this direction with their Nordic Pavilion by entrusting me, a German curator, with the presentation of it. In the catalogue, I reiterated my suggestion about exchanging pavilions; after all, we had been speaking for years about a European Union.